Everything You Need To Know About The Shape Of Ice Hockey Blades & Skate Sharpening

Regardless of anything you’ve heard or been told, the shape of an ice hockey blade is an upside down “U” there will be a picture provided at the bottom illustrating this fact. The reason for this is you get 2 edges that give you a much better level of balance and it also means you’re a lot more manoeuvrable on the ice. Having 2 edges also allow you to “grip” the ice while turning sharply in different directions (each edge is used to hold “grip” the ice while turning in a different direction, turning sharply (hockey turning) to the left means you’ll be using your outside edge on your left skate and the inside edge on your right skate) as you lean left or right on the ice, you lean of on your edges (leaning left will put you on your outside edge of your left skate and inside edge on your right skate (or blade) leaning right will put you on the opposite edges (left skate will be on its inside edge while right skate will be on its outside edge). If the blades were not shaped like this, skaters would not be as agile as they are and there balance would also be reduced dramatically.

Popular skating terms

In ice skating or hockey what does hollow mean?

Hollow – The hollow is the depth of the “U” in the skate, when the skate is sharpened, the depth of the “U” is what is affected, when you want a “sharper” blade, the depth of the “U” is increased example; a sharpen or hollow of 5/16 and if you want a duller skate 5/8 for a dull skate sharpen (watch the video below for more)

Bite – means the level of hold the edge of the blade has on the ice.

Shape of hockey blade (upside down “U” shape)

2 edges allow you to turn sharply in different directions. As shown in the picture below, when one edge is being used (during a tight turn) the other edge is off the ice, which would mean if you only had one edge, you wouldn’t be able to do these kinds of turns (have great agility) with a single edged blade.